United States Embassies Security

A third Marine embassy guard who was arrested last month for alleged improper associations with Soviet women was released from the brig Tuesday on grounds that there was insufficient reason to keep him behind bars, the Pentagon said. But Staff Sgt. Robert S. Stufflebeam was ordered to remain on the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Va., and is still considered a suspect, Pentagon spokesman Robert Sims said, adding that he could face formal charges later.

U.S. Embassy guards here were quick to act when they spotted a man videotaping the ornate three-story building from across the street in leafy Zrinjevac Park. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was arriving the next day. Security experts knew that the embassy, which hugs a busy downtown intersection, was vulnerable to the same kind of terrorist truck bombs that gutted two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.

The two U.S. embassies in Africa that were shattered by terrorist bombs in August were vulnerable to attack because of decades of inattention to security, a senior administration official said Thursday, summarizing the findings of an official review board. The board said many U.S. diplomatic missions around the world have similar deficiencies and are tempting targets for terrorists.

The United States temporarily closed six of its embassies Thursday because of security concerns, the State Department said. The embassies are to be shut until Monday as a precaution because they are believed to have been under surveillance by suspicious individuals, a department employee said on condition of anonymity. The embassies are in Gambia, Togo, Madagascar, Liberia, Namibia and Senegal. The department has received no specific threats. The department noted that U.S.

The U.S. ambassador to Israel on Thursday ordered the embassy in Tel Aviv closed temporarily after receiving a "direct, credible" threat against the facility, a spokesman said. Embassy spokesman Larry Schwartz would not elaborate on specifics of the threat but said the closure was in line with other actions by the U.S. government in recent weeks to protect diplomatic missions amid "heightened regional tensions," including the latest U.S. military confrontation with Iraq. Ambassador Edward S.

U.S. embassies in the West African countries of Ghana and Togo were closed Monday because of security threats, the State Department said. The embassy in Ghana will be closed at least through Wednesday, according to an announcement released here and in the Ghanaian capital of Accra. In Togo, the embassy was to be closed Monday and "possibly additional days," a separate announcement said. Americans in the two countries were urged to avoid all U.S. facilities.

In an unusual action, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee on Friday postponed again its confirmation hearings on Edward J. Derwinski to be the nation's first veterans secretary, and set a closed session to study national security information involving the nominee.

Police tightened security at the U.S. and French embassies in the Norwegian capital on Wednesday amid fears that they could be the target of attacks as tension rises in the Persian Gulf, officials here said.

Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) pledged Monday that Congress will conduct a full-scale investigation into what he called "a textbook case in incompetence" by the Reagan Administration that has jeopardized security at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

President Reagan has received a briefing from national security advisers about problems that have developed in the Marine sex-and-spying cases, according to White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, who said Monday: "These cases may be difficult to prosecute." "The President certainly is concerned about the quality of the investigation and the case in the sense that we want to prosecute whoever has been involved in espionage activities," Fitzwater said.

The two U.S. embassies in Africa that were shattered by terrorist bombs in August were vulnerable to attack because of decades of inattention to security, a senior administration official said Thursday, summarizing the findings of an official review board. The board said many U.S. diplomatic missions around the world have similar deficiencies and are tempting targets for terrorists.

The U.S. ambassador to Israel on Thursday ordered the embassy in Tel Aviv closed temporarily after receiving a "direct, credible" threat against the facility, a spokesman said. Embassy spokesman Larry Schwartz would not elaborate on specifics of the threat but said the closure was in line with other actions by the U.S. government in recent weeks to protect diplomatic missions amid "heightened regional tensions," including the latest U.S. military confrontation with Iraq. Ambassador Edward S.

U.S. embassies in the West African countries of Ghana and Togo were closed Monday because of security threats, the State Department said. The embassy in Ghana will be closed at least through Wednesday, according to an announcement released here and in the Ghanaian capital of Accra. In Togo, the embassy was to be closed Monday and "possibly additional days," a separate announcement said. Americans in the two countries were urged to avoid all U.S. facilities.

Because safety concerns ruled out their usual long walks, Myles and Barbara Frechette played tennis for exercise while he was U.S. ambassador to Colombia. While they played, armed men guarded the perimeter of the tennis court, their high-powered rifles trained on the high-rise buildings around the embassy residence, fearing sniper fire. Even exercise can be dangerous for U.S. diplomats assigned to embassies considered at high risk for terrorism.

The U.S. government has spent more than $1 billion to turn about 20 of its embassies around the world into state-of-the-art anti-terrorist fortresses, designed to withstand mob violence and car bombs. The buildings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam are not among them. State Department officials said that, until Friday's deadly bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, neither country was on the department's list of high-danger posts.

The U.S. Embassy in Cairo, the largest American diplomatic structure in the world, dominates this dusty city's horizon. Two stone towers cover a full block, dwarfing the surrounding villas, university campus and government offices. They seem to symbolize American might. But the embassy, secured far behind an 8-foot-high concrete wall on streets where parking is banned and heavily armed police patrol, also proclaims American vulnerability.

Marine guards at embassies should be subject to random lie detector tests, an internal Navy study has concluded, Pentagon sources said Monday. In addition, the Marine Corps and State Department should abandon their practice of relying on senior noncommissioned officers to head up embassy guard units, said the study ordered in the aftermath of a sex-and-spy scandal involving the Marine guard force at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

A senior Soviet official denied Wednesday that his government planted electronic listening devices in the new U.S. Embassy building here, and he accused the White House of using a spying incident to block an arms control agreement. The official, Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir F. Petrovsky, brushed aside as "dirty inventions" and "groundless claims" charges made Tuesday by President Reagan. Reagan had said that U.S.

In an unusual action, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee on Friday postponed again its confirmation hearings on Edward J. Derwinski to be the nation's first veterans secretary, and set a closed session to study national security information involving the nominee.

As the balmy summer midnight approached, a young corporal on guard duty at this Marine base in the wooded hills of northern Virginia paused to contemplate the espionage conviction meted out a few hours earlier to Sgt. Clayton J. Lonetree. "It doesn't erase the black mark, sir," he tersely told a reporter, "but at least it's over, and now we can move on." For the first time in the Marines' 212-year history, one of their own had been found guilty of selling secrets to the enemy.